30 April 2017

Looking around for inspiration. It all started with the knives in the bottom row, and once I started taking photos, rules evolved, especially: Nothing in the photo must be moved, only the camera.

Coincidentally I was looking up Eduardo Chillida's prints and suddenly made the connection with "the Chillida" in the bottom row - though it's unlikely a gas cooker played any part in his inspriation -

29 April 2017

A few days ago I mentioned the change from studio to carpentry workhop. Today was taken up with completing the transformation: making the room-within-a-room dust tight ... and convertible into a place to sew, if need be.

Let's start with the minimalist view -

Tom needs to be able to open the window so that paint smells can disperse. He'll be spray painting, hence all the plastic sheeting.

A lot of "stuff" got sorted and moved off the counters -

Boxes of tools are lined up ready to be taken to the next job -

and cutting tables etc are at the ready -

There's just about enough room to swing a cat, metaphorically at least. And the carpentry equipment can be moved to one side, and the plastic "walls" rolled up, to allow access to sewing machine etc.

But first things first: with any luck, shelves will be cut and painted this weekend. Bookshelves are about to be born (somewhat overdue).

Elsewhere in the flat, walking space is somewhat restricted. It usually gets worse before it gets better, doesn't it?

As the long weekend continues, I shall be sitting comfortably on the sofa, using the coffee table as my work space. Less is more!

28 April 2017

About four months ago I decided to refresh my Spanish, and started using an app called Duolingo - "free, fun, and science-based". The initial test told me I knew 29% of Spanish (whatever that means!) - and as I worked through the bite-sized lessons, reaching checkpoints, my score became 25%, 22%, 21%. Turns out it's not because of getting things wrong but because of not practising enough!

My daily goal was to do two of the bite-sized lessons, which isn't a lot - you don't get fluent in a language with just 15 minutes' practice a day, or rather, whenever it suits you. So I decided to "do my Spanish" every evening, in bed - sleep seems to improve language learning - and to do at least three lessons, or as many as I could stay awake for. (The repetition can be soporific...)

The end was in sight - only 10 lessons-groups to go. Some evenings, the screen would be dotted with lots of little lessons that needed revisiting - it's keeping up with these, keeping the skill bars full, that gets you points (sometimes people reach 60%). And if you reach your daily goal every day, you build up a streak.

My streak reached 101 days yesterday - and then I stayed up later than usual and suddenly realised it was nearly midnight - uh oh -

Message received at three minutes past midnight

Reader, what would you do - pay £9.99 to repair, or say "no thanks"? I had no option - the screen is locked. Neither works.

It was good to practise regularly and also to be able to speak, repeat, compare pronunciation. The emphasis on the oral, on having to figure things out - rather than read a list declensions etc, that traditional grammar-based approach - was a big leap forward for me. I feel quite devastated that I've lost it - through inattention, through getting away from useful routine.

Maybe I'll put the app on my phone, and start again (it's all practice, right?) and use the "test out" option on the groups of lessons, which can whizz you through them. Maybe I'll have a break. Maybe I'll start a new language - Dutch, Welsh, Norwegian? Vietnamese? It's a shame they don't do Mandarin.

27 April 2017

Just as this Island Belongs to the Gulls

Just as this island belongs to the gulls,and the gulls to their cryand their cry to the windand the wind to no one,

So is this island the gulls,and the gulls are their cryand their cry is the windand the wind no one’s.

Herman de Coninck (1944-97) was a Belgin poet who "aimed to produce poetry for the masses", and also a magazine editor, essayist, and prolific letter-writer. He died of heart failure in Lisbon, where there is a plaque to him that reads: "Fairy Tale. Once upon a time there was a man who was always just." (via)

The poem is combined with Hans Frank's print (colour woodblock on oriental paper) in a British Museum publication, Birds.

It's almost time for photos of the first four JQs for 2017 to be posted in the CQ files. Tick, tick, tick ... that's the sound of time running out.

I've been trying to get going on this, but (excuses, excuses!) can't find fabric, or tools, or wadding, or time, or energy, or (dare I say) enthusiasm.

My topic is grids and there are plenty of those about! Yesterday, wandering homewards through Camden Town in the spring Sunday-morning sunshine, the camera found lots of grids, even grids within grids -

The carpentry workroom has been enlarged to allow access to the sewing machine (it's the mysterious object in front of the microwave) -

So there should be no excuses.

In preparation, I lifted a few more of the plastic sheets and found some fabric ... cut backings to size (enough for all the eventual JQs), and found some plain fabric for backgrounds for some fronts. Good start!

Then the iron was needed. I'd used it a few days before - but where was it now? It became crucial to find and use the iron before anything else could be done. I looked in every room, several times, wandering through the flat like the Flying Dutchman, unable to rest. I looked in crazy places, and cursed the way the plastic sheeting hampered the search ... not that it would have been put in such inaccessible places ... and still it was not in the places I'd already visited several times already.

The afternoon went by, enlivened by a little desultory blog-reading and email writing, interspersed with cups of tea and there may have been a biscuit or two involved as well. And of course the restless, fruitless wandering in The Great Search For The Iron.

It grew dark. Nothing had been accomplished. I'd made some supper, and finally T&G showed up to help eat it.

My first question was: "Have you seen the iron? I need to use it and can't find it." Tom went into the workroom to have a look, then brought me in and pointed -

Clever camouflage, isn't it? Or - you could say, it's a helluva mess and enough is enough.

Fast forward to the next day. The iron has been used - and put away again. If being returned to its previous location can be considered as "put away". (It'll have to do for now.) Silver lining - I found some fabric that fits the "gridded" theme -

And there's this little piece, printed and invisibly quilted, a grid already and waiting for another grid, perhaps of these thread circles or perhaps of something else.

At this point I have gathered some more fabrics - including some grids made with "travel lines" -

and even a silk scarf that I probably won't cut up -

So now - or maybe tomorrow - I can get down to doing something. As with drawing - "Just start, and see where it leads."

Seeing where it leads is my reason for doing the JQs. I'm questioning everything at the moment; is that called an existential crisis? Doing JQs seems a bit futile in the teeth of what I can see from my window (beggars, gamblers, and goodness knows what the ordinary people are going through), never the horrors and dangers of the world situation.

23 April 2017

A recent theme on the Contemporary Quilt group's discussion list has been political quilts - those dealing with current affairs and with injustices and conflicts in today's world. Never mind that the UK is now - again, so soon - in the run-up to yet another election, which puts my head in the sand as I retreat to a media-free zone.

My own work is very unlikely to include any political theme - it's process and materials that interest me: stitching as drawing, the cloth-ness of fabric, that sort of up-in-the-air thing. But I feel strongly that textile artists and contemporary quilters need to be aware not just of the different varieties of quilts being made, but of what's going on in the world.

Maggie Hambling may have done work about Syria and climate change [though an environmental message in the Wall of Water series was not a conscious plan]; Gerhard Richter (those Baader-Meinhof paintings come to mind), Anselm Kiefer (German history) - but what about Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, what political themes have they used [flags? the commentary inherent in appropriated images?]; and there are many African & East European artists who are prepared to challenge the status quo.

When it comes to textiles, very few will tackle such issues, said one contributor, but among them are Cas Holmes [connection with nature; sustainable practice], Sandra Meech [arctic meltdown]

Christine Chester made a piece about the Bosnian War, and a large memory loss series. Irene MacWilliam has made "year quilts" tracking current events, and other work including "Common Loss" - one red square for each person killed in the Troubles -

"Politics is about so much I am wondering how it is possible to actuallyavoid being political" said another contributor to the discussion.

So ... if I did a textile work on a political theme, it might be about climate change, or biodiversity, or disappearing languages, or illiteracy, or food waste, or over-use of antibiotics, or the disappearance of art/design from school curriculums.

Or the NHS - its death by a thousand cuts. Ditto for libraries.

Suddenly there seems a lot to do ...

Maybe the common core is the idea of things disappearing through neglect, a neglect that comes from taking them for granted. Perhaps this arises to some extent from a feeling a personal powerlessness.

Address it through art, yes ... but then my "favourite" question arises: Why a quilt? Why cloth, why stitch; why this medium. Would another medium be more appropriate, more telling, more impactful (or quicker, or easier... or reach a wider audience)?

Addendum

An interesting article, from a non-quilter's perspective, is here. The writer says that a quilt is a good medium for the topic of migration - "for what else is a traditional quilt but the fragments of previous lives, worn out and no longer sustainable, now reassembled and stitched together to create a new whole for a new life? "

22 April 2017

This morning, as I dash around with a duster, preparing for a house guest before rushing out to an all-day meeting, we revisit April of five years ago, during the Book Arts MA course.

On 20 April I was copying out, and over-writing, text from an article on ... what, can't remember (which is what the work was about, obscured memories) -

On 23 April, it was couching threads into small books -

The concern was with the fronts and backs of embroidery - here the front is the dark thick thread, the back is the lighter thinner couching thread that holds it on the page. They look like landscape, but there's that strange hiatus at the spine...

I still have the colour catchers (somewhere) and the "embarrassing richness of threads", some inherited from friends' mothers -

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are, any or every Tuesday? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.

7 May - V&A, medieval galleries

14 May - Horniman (gardens?)

21 May - Wallace Collection

28 May - Southwark Cathedral

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I had work in "A Letter in Mind" at the Oxo Gallery, September 2017 and again in 2018.